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The U.S. music industry is becoming more open-minded about working with online music stores from the tiniest start-up to Amazon.com, hoping to boost digital music sales and erode the dominance of Apple Inc’s iTunes. U.S. music companies, once paranoid about the wide-scale piracy enabled by Web-based companies like Napster and KaZaa, are now embracing new business models such as giving away free song downloads. Their goal is: to increase digital revenue as CD sales drop more sharply than anticipated; and to create alternatives to iTunes to boost their negotiating power against Apple when licensing contracts are renewed. “Any viable music… Read more »

There’s quite a bit more rock than rap on Kid Rock’s first studio album in four years, tentatively titled “Rock’n’Roll Jesus,” which will arrive October 9. Recorded at his Michigan home, the Atlantic Records set cuts a broad stylistic swath, from metallic headbangers like first single “So Hot” and “Sugar” (the set’s only rap track) to such rootsy, gospel-hued fare as “Amen” and “When You Love Someone.” The Motown-influenced “Roll On” rolls alongside the power ballad “Miss Understood” and the Crescent City-flavored “New Orleans” (co-written with pal David Allen Coe), while “All Summer Long” entertainingly mashes up elements of Warren… Read more »

New Order without bassist Peter Hook after band members Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris issued a statement today (July 20) saying they vow to continue. The pair's statement comes after former bassist Hook claimed recently that he is not working with his bandmates anymore. Sumner and Morris declared: "After 30 years in a band together we are very disappointed that Hooky has decided to go to the press and announce unilaterally that New Order have split up. We would have hoped that he could have approached us personally first. He does not speak for all the band, therefore we can… Read more »

There wasn’t a Thursday fan alive who wasn’t floored by last month’s announcement that the New Jersey emo innovators will be working with Victory Records on a retrospective CD/DVD package that, as a press release noted, will “tell Thursday’s 10-year-career story from the beginning to the present.” After all, Thursday’s 2002 split from Victory – which issued the band’s landmark 2001 LP, Full Collapse – was the very definition of cantankerous. Mud was flung from both sides when the band joined Island Records, and lawyers were eventually called in to clean up the mess.At the time of the band’s break… Read more »

Every band dreams of the lucky night it’ll be discovered by a music promoter or favorite record label. Overnight you’ve got a hot record, radio stations everywhere playing your songs and your band becomes a household name. It’s the classic musician’s fairy tale. But it is a fairy tale and, for every new artist who is discovered by a major record label, there are thousands who aren’t. For the rest of us, pursuing a career in music is hard. Now, proposed new royalty rates for Internet radio threaten to make it harder. You see, our Americana band Tangleweed was “discovered”… Read more »

With his ragged mane and heavily tattooed wiry frame, former Guns N’ Roses bass player Duff McKagan looks every bit the rock star. But the 43-year-old musician doubles as a savvy investor, overseeing a diverse portfolio ranging from property and stocks to vintage guitars. While he draws the line at donning a suit and tie, McKagan also runs the business affairs for his new band, Velvet Revolver, which just released its second album, “Libertad.” “I do everything I can do so this band doesn’t get ripped off,” said McKagan, who subscribes to the online edition of The Wall Street Journal,… Read more »

Waving their arms in the air and dancing with 70,000 fans at London’s Wembley Stadium, princes William and Harry celebrated the life of their mother, Princess Diana, on what would have been her 46th birthday Sunday at a concert they organized. William, 25, rocked his hips as Canadian pop star Nelly Furtado belted out her song “Man Eater” – to the embarrassment of younger brother Harry, who shook his head and laughed. Harry, 22, said they asked Elton John to play “Candle in the Wind,” the song he sang at Diana’s 1997 funeral in Westminster Abbey. Originally about Marilyn Monroe,… Read more »

If the Click Five had sold more copies of its debut album, the Boston pop band might be in an even trickier position than it is now. Modest sales, an executive at the group’s Atlantic Records label says, are precisely what enabled the Click Five to survive the departure of original lead singer Eric Dill, who quit last year during preproduction for the follow-up to 2005’s “Greetings From Imrie House.” “The band had achieved a good deal of success,” says Andy Karp, head of A&R at Atlantic, pointing to “Imrie House” sales of 333,000 copies. “But they hadn’t really become… Read more »

Kings of Leon singer/guitarist Caleb Followill says the band had one rule while it recorded its third album, “Because of the Times,” due out April 3. “It was just us against the world and so we pretty much threw everything out the window that people warned us about,” Followill says. “We have 13 songs, which is an unlucky number and I hate stuff like that. I was kind of like, ‘F— it man, if we’re going to have a seven-minute song, let’s put it at the beginning. If we want to try stuff, let’s try it.’ “And at the end… Read more »